


Take Me Alive

by rendawnie



Series: Pieces [20]
Category: iKON (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Falling In Love, Family, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Second Chances, Starting Over, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Trains, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 22:41:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11838489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rendawnie/pseuds/rendawnie
Summary: How would it have ended, if Junhoe hadn't been at the train station that morning?Soundtrack: "Take Me Alive", Tweaker





	Take Me Alive

Junhoe shifts uncomfortably in the chairs lining the hospital hallway outside Kim Jinhwan’s room. He’s been here for fourteen hours straight, and somewhere during the first hour is when he learned Kim Jinhwan’s name, and he’s been rolling it around in his head ever since, instead of sleeping. He can’t sleep. Not laying across these torture devices masquerading as chairs, and not as long as he’s continually confronted by reporters, family members and friends of Jinhwan, and various policemen and officials looking for statements.

He gives the same information every time. He’s said the words dozens of times already.

_No, I don’t know Mr. Kim personally. I’ve never met him before, or spoken with him._

_I was waiting for the train to work when I saw him step closer to the tracks. It looked like he was crying, at least very distraught, and I thought maybe he was going to jump._

_Everyone else was ignoring him, so I called out and started to go over to him. He turned around and saw me, and then he lost his footing, slipped, and fell._

_He hit his head on the way down and collapsed onto the tracks._

_It was just after eight in the morning. A train was coming within the next five minutes, so I jumped down and tried to pull him back up. He was unconscious by that point._

_His shoe was stuck. I kept trying, but I saw the train coming around the corner. Finally I just yanked his foot out of his shoe and rolled us to the side where we would be safe until the train passed._

_I don’t know Mr. Kim personally. I just did what I thought was right._

Junhoe’s throat hurts from shouting the words over and over. He still can’t hear much of anything. The doctors think the noise of the train may have caused a perforated eardrum, on the side of his face that was closest to the tracks. They’re looking into it, but Jinhwan’s more important. Junhoe’s making sure to remind them of that, every chance he gets.

He wouldn’t even be allowed here, so close to Jinhwan’s room in the ICU, but Jinhwan’s mother insisted that Junhoe was family now, and that he could stay as long as he wanted.

There was no other family coming for Junhoe or waiting anywhere else, so he stayed.

He watches doctors go in and out of Jinhwan’s room. He hasn’t actually been inside yet, even though the invitation’s been extended to him repeatedly by Jinhwan’s parents. Junhoe’s not sure if he could handle it. He’s been told that Jinhwan’s injuries aren't that severe, that the most pressing problems, his head and a few cracked ribs, are under control. They'll get his side of the story when he wakes up.

He still feels like it would be an intrusion to just waltz into the hospital room of an unconscious man and make himself at home.

So, he’s been trying for fourteen hours, give or take bathroom breaks and statements and hearing tests, to make himself comfortable on these godforsaken chairs, and he’s just about to give up, when Jinhwan’s mother emerges from the room again and finds him still in the same place.

“You’re still here? Sweetheart, you don’t need to stay. I have your phone number, just in case anything changes,” she says, and she looks so, so tired.

Junhoe clears his throat, sitting up and trying to straighten himself up, running a hand through his messy hair. “It’s okay. I don’t...I don’t have anywhere else to be.” He tries to say it as quietly as possible, even over the high pitched, painful, pounding ring in his ears. He hopes he succeeds.

A slight frown crosses her face, like she wants to ask, but she doesn’t want to know, maybe. It’s a look Junhoe’s familiar with, but it passes quickly and she shrugs, giving up. “Okay. Well. Jinhwan’s father and I are going to check into a hotel and shower and change clothes, maybe get some food. The doctors don’t expect he’ll wake up for quite a while yet.”

Junhoe nods. Jinhwan’s mother regards him silently for a moment, then she mirrors the nod. “I’ll bring you a bite to eat,” she decides, and Junhoe doesn’t get a chance to argue before she’s gone, heading down the hall to meet Jinhwan’s father at the elevator bank nearby.

He looks around. The police seem to have gone, finally, as have the news crews. _Good._ Junhoe is tired of being lauded as a hero, just for doing what anyone else should have, could have done. He’s tired in general, really. But also, tired of that.

Jinhwan’s parents have been gone a few minutes when Junhoe gets up, taking the few steps across the hallway from the chairs to the door of Jinhwan’s hospital room. He could go in. He could go in and just see what’s happening. Jinhwan would never know. His parents would never know. A nurse might come in, but that wouldn’t be so bad. It’s not like he’s not _allowed_ in. That's been made very clear.

It takes another fifteen minutes for Junhoe to work up the nerve to turn the doorknob, and then he lets go of it and goes back across the hallway and sits down in the chairs again, trying to calm his breathing.

It takes twenty-five minutes total for Junhoe to actually, truly go into Jinhwan’s hospital room, and his eyes are squeezed shut as he pushes the door closed behind him. He doesn’t know what to expect.

Junhoe starts to cross the room blindly, then he thinks about all the electrical equipment and cords and tubes Jinhwan’s probably hooked up to and decides he’d better watch where he’s going, before his clumsy feet accidentally unplug all the machines giving Jinhwan the help he needs to wake up from this.

He concentrates on navigating himself past the complicated mess of technology surrounding the hospital bed, and finally drops himself into a chair with a relieved whoosh of air. Another chair. This one is actually less comfortable, a prospect Junhoe hadn’t actually considered. He’s been too busy worrying about this exact moment, the one where he would have to look at Jinhwan again.

He looked at him before, briefly, as he stood close to the edge of the train tracks. Junhoe saw his small stature, his skinny little body bracing against the February cold without a coat. As Junhoe walked closer, he saw Jinhwan’s profile, the way his nose turned up as Jinhwan glanced around the train station with red-rimmed eyes, maybe looking for someone. Maybe looking for _anyone._

Junhoe didn’t see much more of Jinhwan until they were rolled up tight together to one side of the train tracks.

His forehead was bleeding, bleeding bad from the gash he’d sustained when he fell. The red was a stark contrast to how white his face had gone, to the blue starting to tinge his lips. Junhoe had managed to shrug his coat off carefully and wrap it around Jinhwan and hold him tight until the trains passed, three in a row, just like they did every morning, through this station.

It was only one minute, maybe two, from start to finish. From Jinhwan falling, Junhoe jumping on the tracks, the small struggle when Jinhwan’s shoe was caught and then Junhoe shoving them both to safety without a thought.

It was only one or two minutes, but it was enough for Junhoe’s entire world to condense down to just he and Jinhwan, whose name he didn’t even know yet.

Even like that, even with blood on his face and blue lips and white cheeks, Jinhwan was beautiful. And maybe, Junhoe realizes as he stares at the hospital bed for the first time, at the small body of the person occupying it, finally, that’s what he’s been avoiding for the last however many hours it’s been now.

Jinhwan’s still beautiful. He looks almost peaceful, actually. Junhoe wonders what made him so sad, sad enough to consider an act like that. He wonders if Jinhwan will ever tell anyone, or if he really wants to know. He sits there, and he stares, and he wonders, and he stares for so long that Jinhwan’s face barely makes sense anymore, so when his eyelids start to twitch, when Jinhwan’s lips start to tremble, Junhoe thinks he’s imagining it.

Then, Jinhwan groans softly and tries to shift in the bed, and Junhoe knows it’s real, suddenly.

“Don’t move,” Junhoe whispers. “You’ll pull out your IV.”

Jinhwan’s eyes focus on him. It takes a while.

“Who--” Jinhwan starts, his voice croaky with disuse and strain. Junhoe waits.

“I think...I know you,” Jinhwan finishes almost half a minute later, going even paler with all the effort of those four words.

“Um, kind of,” Junhoe replies. “I, uh. I pulled you off the tracks. This morning.”

Jinhwan doesn’t reply. Junhoe doesn’t make him.

Jinhwan closes his eyes for a moment, his eyelashes fluttering against the tops of his cheeks.

“Why?” he murmurs after a while, eyes still shut.

Junhoe chews on his bottom lip, thinking. “Because you needed someone to,” he says finally. He doesn’t know if it’s the right answer, or if it’s good enough.

A loud beep sounds from one of Jinhwan’s machines, and Junhoe’s gaze floats up to the screen, flashing green words suddenly.

_ADMINISTERING ONE DOSE OF MORPHINE._

Jinhwan’s smiling, just a little, when Junhoe looks again.

“My hero…” he coos, and then he’s out.

*

Jinhwan stays in the hospital another ten days. He wakes up for good after two, is lucid enough by four to carry on conversations, and on the sixth day, when they send a psychiatrist in to see him, he tells his story.

Junhoe isn’t present when he does. He’s at work, worrying about what’s going on at the hospital.

It’s been six days, and Jinhwan’s eyes light up every time Junhoe visits. He’s not sure who likes him more, Jinhwan, or Jinhwan’s entire family. They talk for hours, about everything. Junhoe finds out that Jinhwan is a singer, or he wants to be one. He doesn’t actually have a steady job. Jinhwan isn’t entirely forthcoming about how he’s been surviving, but Junhoe has some ideas, from snippets of sentences that won’t leave his head.

_I was staying with my friend, he...we work at the same...place. We worked at the same place._

_We even had some of the same clients._

_We did a lot of the same drugs._

_That morning, I’d woken up, and...he took too many. He...he took too many on purpose._

_We were three months behind on rent, and two behind on paying our...employer. Our, um...coordinator._

_We were hopeless. About to be homeless. But we had each other._

_And then I didn’t have him anymore. I didn’t have him and I was about to not have a home, and I’ve been too sick to, y’know...work, because I can’t afford a doctor…_

_I didn’t want to do it anymore._

Junhoe goes to the hospital right from work on the sixth day, the day Jinhwan tells the psychiatrist the things he’s already told Junhoe.

The doctors have done all the tests they need. Jinhwan has pneumonia. Advanced, but treatable. He’ll be okay, physically. The wound on his forehead, where it connected with the train tracks, is stitched and healing.

Jinhwan’s parents live on Jeju, and they beg, plead with him to come home so they can take care of him, but he won’t. He won’t be a burden, he says.

On the morning of the eighth day, near the end of Jinhwan’s withdrawal from the various substances he’d been using as an escape, the psychiatrist brings a new pill for him to try, to help with all the scars that don't show on the outside.

On the ninth day, when Junhoe asks Jinhwan to stay with him after he leaves the hospital, Jinhwan smiles for the first time since that hazy grin on the first day, and Junhoe thinks that if he’s this dazzling in the hospital, after he’s almost died, he’s going to be in for a wild ride when Jinhwan’s fully recovered.

*

Three years later, when Jinhwan hijacks Junhoe’s proposal and pulls out his own engagement ring and puts it on Junhoe’s finger instead of the other way around, which was the original plan, Junhoe figures that he was right all those years ago, when he thought about that wild ride.

Junhoe has a family now, a real family that loves him and looks out for him.

Jinhwan’s mother still calls Junhoe her hero. He can’t get her to stop. Jinhwan calls him that sometimes too, but Junhoe secretly kind of likes it, when he says it.

Secretly, he thinks everyone’s got it wrong. He didn’t save Jinhwan. Jinhwan saved him.


End file.
